This week’s Girls’ Last Touris their most intense episode of the anime released yet. It includes new characters, a bit of adventure, and difficult questions about the definition of human existence.

Japanese Original Episode Title: 技術 / 水槽 / 生命

Plot

Chito and Yuuri are once more lost in a massive black building. As they’re driving around, when guided by strong lights they end up in a huge industrial aquarium supervised and maintained by robots. After coming across a huge maintenance robot, they find a tank with a single fish in it, and its caretaker, also a robot. Yuuri is excited, thinking she’ll be eating that fish, but both the fish robot and Chito forbid her from doing so. The fish robot gives the girls a tour of the facility and allows them to swim in one of the tanks. Yuuri gets the hang of it right away, but Chito almost drowns – no surprises there. After that brief swimming (and laundry) session, the girls fall asleep next to some warm pipes.

They are abruptly awakened by the huge maintenance robot, who explains to the fish robot that he will be dismantling this facility for productivity purposes. The two robots argue for a while, and maintenance robot won’t step back, so Yuuri, with fish robot’s and Chito’s help, decides to blow the big guy to smithereens. The girls save the fish’s and the robot’s life and then leave.

Episode Highlights

Same old: I am not very sure, but I believe the building the girls have found themselves in is very similar to the one on the first episode, as is their dialogue – however, it can’t possibly be the same place, as they’ve climbed up a couple of levels since then.

The earth is dead: Fish robot says to the girls that the earth was once a living being too, to which Yuuri replies with a question: ‘So what is it now?’ Well, guess.

Oblivious to AI: Once more, the girls’ ignorance towards the achievement of human civilization is surprising me. Apparently, they seem to be completely unaware of the fact that humans had once managed to create artificial life forms to take care of menial shit like feeding fish.

Another bath: I think that at this point the only reason the girls get to have a bath so often is so that we can see some casual nudity. Not impressed. And why the hell is Chito wearing a bra?

Swimming: I don’t know why I was surprised at the fact that neither of the girls previously knew how to swim. I guess it’s probably because in my head everyone knows how to swim, even though I’m obviously blatantly wrong.

Themes & Trivia

What is life: Yuuri asks what being alive means, and it has to be hard for Chito to explain since they were born and raised on a dying planet. How miserable. Of course, it is but a small segment of the critique the whole show aims to provide on the humanity’s relationship with the earth.

Cute fish robot: The fish’s caretaker had something very serene about his presence despite the fact that he was not alive by the conventional definition of the word. His character’s goal in this episode (as well as his friend’s death) probably aimed to raise questions of what is considered a living thing.

What is life? Baby don’t hurt me

I think this was my favorite of all the Girls’ Last Tour episodes so far. In terms of structure and concept, I believe it was the ideal prototype every episode of this show should be following. Great stuff!

What did you think of this Girls’ Last Tour episode? Let us know in the comment section below! And don’t forget to check the rest of the Fall 2017 anime reviews on MANGA.TOKYO!